of at least ten times the amount of all the surplus now in the treasury. It seems strange to me that, generally, those gentlemen most anxious to dissipate at a single blow twenty-seven millions of money now in the treasury, by a distribution among the States, should almost always be on the side of claims presented here. If the minority shall have a direct interest to throw the administration into a state of embarrassment by voting more money to be expended than the treasury possesses, the majority must have an interest to prevent that state of things.

One of the two commutation claims allows commutation to a surgeon's mate of the revolutionary army. Over and over again has it been decided that surgeon's mates were not included in any resolution of the old Congress granting commutation. I was not a little surprised to hear it announced by the Senator from Virginia [Mr. LEIGH] that the Committee on Revolutionary Claims are now unanimous in favor of allowing commutation to surgeon's mates. And the reason offered by the Senator for making this allowance was most singular. Other officers, less exposed than surgeon's mates being expressly named in the resolutions, were allowed commutation; therefore surgeon's mates ought to be allowed commutation. This might have been a good argument for the foundation of a bargain to be made with surgeon's mates at the time the service was performed; but it seems to be too late for the United States to volunteer such an argument as this for the purpose of getting rid of some of its surplus funds fifty years after the account for service has been settled and paid. Were not the soldiers of the Revolution as much exposed in the service as the officers? And if the argument of exposure be a good one as applied to the surgeon's mate, will it not be equally legitimate as applied to the poor soldiers? Are they not equally entitled to commutation pay? The Senator from Maine, [Mr. SHEPLEY,] of those who were disposed to go to the bottom in investigating these commutation claims, is yet left on the Committee of Revolutionary Claims; is it possible that he makes one of the committee which now unites in this after legislation in favor of surgeon's mates? If so, I can only say, 66 Ephraim is joined to idols; let him alone."

[APRIL 22, 1836.

Having thus succeeded in procuring the principal of what might always be considered a doubtful claim, the agents now follow up with the claim for interest, amounting to two or three times as much as the original commutation-probably from ten to twenty thousand dollars in each case. If interest shall now be allowed on this claim, there is no claim which has ever been presented and allowed which cannot claim interest; and hundreds of millions of money will be still due to those who have been liberally paid by the Government for the services they have rendered.

It is worthy of remark, that these claims for commutation, which come in upon us as a flood, had quietly rested for nearly half a century, and were never thought of until the pension law of 1828 had passed. It is a fact that not only the officers and their heirs who were entitled to commutation, and had received it, but such as were not entitled to it, and never expected it, in different sections of the country, have been written to by persons offering to act as agents to prosecute and recover their claims. The Senator from Virginia, [Mr. TYLER,] who has recently resigned his seat, had presented many petitions for commutation during the present session, some of which I know had been repeatedly decided against by former committees of the Senate. I know not whether these petitions have or have not been disposed of by the committee. Since the immense grants of land scrip that have passed to Virginia officers, there seems to be a general idea that every officer who has obtained the land is entitled to commutation also; and it would seem as if every man, woman, and child, in Virginia, who had a male ancestor (whether whig or tory) living in the time of the Revolution, would suppose that ancestor to be an officer, and to be entitled both to land and to commutation.

The truth probably is, that there are not half a dozen officers on the rolls of the Revolution who were entitled to commutation, who did not receive it nearly half a century prior to the presentation of these claims. If they did not receive it, the fault was not with the Government. Every officer living, and the heirs of every officer deceased, knew when such officer was entitled to the pay, and received it according to the terms of the several resolutions of Congress. After the revolutionary claims had been barred by a law of limitation, the time was more than once extended by Congress, until, probably, not a single bonafide claim was left. And now,

if, in consequence of casualty or mistake, any case remains, is there any obligation of the nation to pay any thing beyond the principal? It would seem that the public generosity never can satisfy those who have been most liberally dealt with. The allowance of commutation pay in the cases of Bond and Douglass, first made, was a stretch of generosity far beyond what would be expected in any case between individuals; and now to come in for a claim of interest, equal to twice or thrice the amount at first granted, almost exceeds the presumption of the sturdy beggar who, because you have given him a dinner, claims the perpetual right to feed from your table, without so much as an offer of thanks for your generosity.

Mr. CLAY said the Senator from New Hampshire [Mr. HILL] had been here five years; and was it possible that, within that period, one little clerk was the only corrupt officer he had found in the Government? He thought, if he would look into the Post Office and other Departments, he would find many more instances of corruption. That Senator and himself had went to gether in opposition to the mints; and he wished he might signalize himself by one more vote with him on the distribution of the surplus, instead of leaving it to be eaten up by the rats, or squandered away by the in

Mr. HILL would cheerfully go with the Senator from Kentucky in voting for the distribution of the surplus revenue, if he could be convinced there would be any surplus to be distributed after the proper appropriations had passed, and he could do it without violating his conscience in regard to constitutional difficulties. He was fearful, however, that the gentleman [Mr. CLAY] did not always vote as patriotically as he preached. He was willing to go as far as the Senator from Kentucky, or any other, in ferreting out corruptions. He had no claims to eloquence, and therefore would acknowledge his inferiority, as a public speaker, to the Senator from Kentucky.

Mr. CLAY said the gentleman [Mr. HILL] had done himself great injustice when he acknowledged his inferiority in public speaking; for he (Mr. C.) liked his extemporaneous speaking better than the speeches he read. There was great point, and even eloquence, in it. The gentleman had pledged himself to go for this measure of distributing the surplus revenue, in case he could be satisfied there were surplus funds to distribute, and he could get over his constitutional difficulties. He (Mr. C.) promised him that he could, when he took up that subject, show there were no constitutional difficulties, and that there were twenty-seven millions to distribute.

Mr. HILL said it was evident that the right of those persons to commutation was not perfect until after the passage of the bill. Their failure in 1792 to establish it left them without remedy. If they were included under the resolution, there was no necessity for any law; and if they established the precedent of allowing interest, they would bring in all the pensioners who were stricken from the list under the law of 1818.

Mr. CALHOUN, after some remarks against the bill, said he did not see why the Senate should be so very particular about these small matters, when their attention was so little directed to the millions of money in the deposite banks, independent of the seven millions of stock in the Bank of the United States, and the money arising from the Chickasaw purchase. He wished the hundredth part of the zeal was directed to these large items, while the country was on the brink of ruin, that there was to small matters. He hoped the money of the Government would be taken out of the hands of these public plunderers, and that Congress would not adjourn till it made an equitable disposition of it.

Mr. LEIGH said if he had any zeal in this matter, it was founded on justice; and in a matter of this kind, although it was small, he would measure out justice in the same manner he would in any tribunal or court of justice, to the last farthing.

[Mr. CALHOUN said he had no personal reference to the Senator from Virginia.]

Mr. L. then went into an argument of some length in favor of the justice of the claim.

Mr. BUCHANAN was against establishing a precedent for the payment of interest. It was but seldom he concurred in opinion with the Senator from South Carolina, [Mr. CALHOUN,] and, as they coincided now on this bill, it gave him pleasure to state that concurrence. But, in regard to our being on the brink of ruin, two years ago it was stated we were on the brink of ruin, because there was no money in the treasury; and now, because we had an overflowing treasury, we are said to be on the brink of ruin; and when the distribution of the surplus fund was made, which he believed would be done before the session closed, he expected, in two or three years more, they should hear we were again on the brink of ruin, because it had been distributed.

After some further remarks from Messrs. SHEPLEY, WALKER, WHITE, KING of Alabama, DAVIS, and PRENTISS,

[SENATE.

The question was then taken on the final passage of the bill, and it was passed: Yeas 22, nays 21, as follows: YEAS-Messrs. Crittenden, Davis, Goldsborough, Hendricks, Hubbard, Kent, Knight, Leigh, McKean, Mangum, Moore, Naudain, Nicholas, Porter, Preston, Rives, Robbins, Shepley, Southard, Tomlinson, Web. ster, White-22.

NAYS-Messrs. Benton, Black, Brown, Buchanan, Calhoun, Clay, Cuthbert, Ewing of Ohio, Grundy, Hill, King of Alabama, King of Georgia, Morris, Niles, Prentiss, Robinson, Ruggles, Swift, Tipton, Walker, Wright-21.

LAND BILL.

The bill to appropriate, for a limited time, the nett proceeds of the sales of the public lands among the States, and to grant lands to certain States, came up as the special order, the question being on Mr. WALKER'S amendment.

Mr. WALKER then addressed the Senate in favor of the amendment.

The question was taken on Mr. WALKER's amendment, and it was lost: Yeas 9, nays 26, as follows:

YEAS-Messrs. Benton, Black, King of Alabama, Moore, Morris, Nicholas, Robinson, Ruggles, Walker--9. NAYS-Messrs. Brown, Buchanan, Clay, Crittenden, Cuthbert, Ewing of Ohio, Goldsborough, Grundy, Hendricks, Hill, Hubbard, Kent, Leigh, McKean, Naudain, Niles, Porter, Prentiss, Robbins, Shepley, Southard, Swift, Tomlinson, Wall, White-26.

Mr. BENTON submitted the following amendment, which was ordered to be printed:

To come in after the words "nett proceeds"-"which nett proceeds shall be ascertained to be the balance which remains, after deducting from the gross proceeds all expenses for the year on account of public lands, to wit:

1. Appropriations for the General Land Office. 2. Appropriations for the surveyor general's offices. 3. Appropriations for surveying public lands. 4. Appropriations for salaries and commissions to registers and receivers.

5. Appropriations for annuities to Indians on account of the purchase of lands.

6. Appropriations for holding treaties for the purchase of lands.

7. Appropriations for amounts paid within the year for the extinction of Indian titles.

8. Appropriations for removing Indians from the lands purchased from them.

9. Appropriations for the five per centum allowed by compact to the States in which the lands lie."

Mr. ROBINSON also informally offered the following amendment for the consideration of the Senate, which was laid on the table:

And be it further enacled, That all lands belonging to the United States, which have been, or hereafter may be, subject to entry at private sale for twenty years and upwards, and have not been sold, shall hereafter be sold at one dollar per acre, and at a reduction in price of ten per centum every five years, until the price of such lands be reduced to fifty cents per acre. The Senate then adjourned.

the Committee on the Public Lands be instructed to report a bill accordingly."

[APRIL 23, 1836.

The state of the paper system was now hideous and appalling, and those who did not mean to suffer by its catastrophe should fly from its embraces. According to a report made in the House of Representatives by the select committee, of which Mr. Gillet, of New York, was the chairman, the present number of chartered banks and their branches in the United States could not be less than seven hundred and fifty, their chartered capitals not less 300,000,000, and their chartered rights to issue paper money extended to $750,000,000! Mr. B. repeated this statement; and, dwelling upon the last sum, (the $750,000,000 of paper money,) he said it was enough to make the spirits of the dead start from their graves! the spirits, he meant, of those dead patriots who, having seen the evils of paper money, and being determined to free their country from such evils in all future time, took care, by a constitutional enactment, to make gold and silver the only currency of the constitution, and the only tender in payment of debts.

Having stated the number of the banks, their vast nominal capital, their unlimited real power to cover the country with paper, the great amount of their paper issues, five of them alone having increased their circulation fifteen millions in about a year, and reminding the Senate that the business of chartering banks was in full progress in many of the States, Mr. B. looked to the state of the connexion between this wilderness of banks and the federal Treasury. This connexion, he said, depended, in point of law, upon the joint resolution of 1816, which, in addition to specie and the notes of the Bank of the United State, gave authority, by implication, to receive the notes of all specie paying banks in payment of public dues. This was the law; the practice under it he would state presently, and would show that no practice under it, with the multitudes of banks now existing, could be safe for the country, or free from the danger of irretrievably entangling the federal Government with the ups and downs of the whole paper system, and all the fluctuations, convulsions, and disasters, to which it was subject. But before he did this, he would say that the joint resolution of 1816 was a wise and laudable act at the time it was passed, and made a great step at that time towards the improvement of the currency. The currency of the country, especially of the whole South and West, was at that time paper, and not only paper, but inconvertible paper; the banks which issued it not paying specie, and the holder being obliged to sell his notes at 10, 15, or 20 per cent. discount, if he wished to get hard money for them. The whole community was submitting to the imposition of using this paper, and the federal Treasury with the rest. The joint resolution of 1816 was passed, and fixed a limited time, less than a year, within which no notes but those of specie paying banks should be receivable for public dues. The effect was immediate and magical, and

The joint resolution of 1816 was then wise and laudable when passed; but the advance which the paper system has since made, and is still making, entirely changes the effect of that resolution. There are no longer any non-specie paying banks whose notes will be received either by the federal Treasury or by individuals; and there 750 specie paying banks, with a constant increase of their number, whose notes may be received by the federal Treasury. In point of law, all these banks are equal; they all have an equal right to be received in federal payments; but, in point of fact, they are not all admitted; and here the practical difficulties begin to present themselves. To receive the paper of all these banks would be to fill the treasury in a very short time with some tens of millions of unavailable funds; to discriminate between them, to receive some and reject others, would be to exercise & power which might lead to favoritism, undue influence, partiality, and injustice, and might invest some man, or some body of men, with a dangerous power over the paper currency. The first question would be, who shall make the discrimination? And the practical answer would probably be, that the deposite banks, for the time being, from 1816 to the present time, have been the practical arbiters of the receivability of State bank paper. These banks, it is presumed, have been required to receive no paper but that which they could credit as specie to the United States; and while this gave them an option which seems naturally to belong to the obligation of paying all the Government demands in specie, yet it had the effect of devolving the power of regulating the paper currency upon banking institutions, formerly the Bank of the United States, and at present upon the three dozen banks which are the depositories of the public moneys. Mr. B. objected to devolving this power upon banks. It was a most responsible and dangerous power, liable to abuse and to great mischief, from indiscretion as well as design. In the first place, there could be no system; for each of the thirty-six banks would decide for itself what should be received and what should have the high character of land office or custom-house money. In the next place, there could be no permanency in the receivability of any particular paper. The deposite bank could make and break its arrangements at pleasure; and what was land office money or custom-house money on one day, might cease to be so on the next, and the public not be able to see any reason for the change, and which change might subject individuals to great loss and imposition. In the third place, the best banks of the country might be capriciously excluded, while insignificant ones might be invested with all the advantages of supplying a federal currency; and, in the present multitude of thirty-six banks, to decide each for itself on the paper of seven hundred and fifty banks, perhaps many of them as good as the deposite banks, it was impossible to get along without complaints and dissatisfaction, and much possible injustice to banks as well as injury to individuals. The next tribunal to decide, Mr. B. would assume to be the Secretary of the Treasury himself; but this would only be an arbiter in name; the Secretary would have to decide according to the representations of members of Congress, and these members would have to act upon the importunity and representation of the petitioning banks; so that there would be no real arbiter, and no real responsibility; and, besides, he (Mr. B.) was not willing to invest any officer whatever with the power of regulating the paper currency, and giving to what

notes he pleased a circulation coextensive with the Union, by ordering them to be received in payment of public dues. The third tribunal was the Congress itself; and this would be found to be no tribunal at all, as every member would take care to have the banks in his own district admitted to all the advantages which were granted to any other; and thus the whole would be admitted without discrimination.

Mr. B. saw insuperable difficulties in the detail as well as in the principle of this question. The federal Government can create a national paper currency by giving receivability to bank paper; it can deluge any new State with bank paper from any other State, by making it receivable for public lands. It can give a State paper currency to a State in spite of itself; in Missouri, for example, where the Legislature has refused to charter a bank from a just and laudable antipathy to a paper currency, and where the federal Government receives paper money for its lands, and thus gives currency to that paper; thus counteracting the policy of the State, and introducing strange and foreign notes into circulation, to the diminution of gold and silver.

Taking the fact as it now existed, and, Mr. B. said, it was clear that the deposite banks, each for itself, was the regulator of the paper currency, and the arbiter of what might and might not be received in payment of public dues, and what was the result? Why, that the whole paper system had run wild. Bank charters were granted for millions; paper issues to exceed all bounds; loans to any amount to any body to speculate, in reality to gamble in stocks, public lands, and what not, until the public treasury is filled to distension with bank paper. The effect of all this uncontrolled state of the paper system has been most signally manifested in the public lands, where the sales have increased from four millions per annum to five millions per quarter, causing the treasury to be filled with paper, the Congress to be harassed with projects for getting rid of surpluses, while the new States have been overrun with specula tors bidding up the lands against cultivators and settlers, and introducing myriads of strange notes into places where they were wholly unknown.

Mr. B. said he was able to inform the Senate how it happened that the sales of the public lands had deceived all calculations, and run up from four millions a year to five millions a quarter; it was this: speculators went to banks, borrowed five, ten, twenty, fifty thousand dol lars in paper, in small notes, usually under twenty dollars, and engaged to carry off these notes to a great distance, sometimes five hundred or a thousand miles, and there laid them out for public lands. Being land office money, they would circulate in the country; many of these small notes would never return at all, and their loss would be a clear gain to the bank; others would not return for a long time; and the bank would draw interest on them for years before they had to redeem them. Thus speculators, loaded with paper, would outbid settlers and cultivators, who had no undue accommodations from banks, and who had nothing but specie to give for lands, or the notes which were its real equivalent. Mr. B. said that, living in a new State, it came within his knowledge to know that such accommodations as he had mentioned were the main cause of the excessive sales which had taken place in the public lands, and that the effect was equally injurious to every interest concerned, except the banks and the speculators; it was injurious to the treasury, which was filling up with paper; to the new States, which were flooded with paper; and to settlers and cultivators, who were outbid by speculators, loaded with this borrowed paper. A return to specie payments for lands is the remedy for all these evils.

It would put an end to every complaint now connect

[SENATE.

ed with the subject, and have a beneficial effect upon every public and private interest. Upon the federal Government its effect would be to check the unnatural sale of the public lands to speculators for paper; it would throw the speculators out of market, limit the sales to settlers and cultivators, stop the swelling increases of paper surpluses in the treasury, put an end to all projects for disposing of surpluses, and relieve all anxiety for the fate of the public moneys in the deposite banks. Upon the new States, where the public lands are situated, its effects would be most auspicious. It would stop the flood of paper with which they are inundated, and bring in a steady stream of gold and silver in its place. It would give them a hard-money currency, and especially a share of the gold currency; for every emigrant could then carry gold to the country. Upon the settler and cultivator who wished to purchase land its effect would be peculiarly advantageous. He would be relieved from the competition of specu lators; he would not have to contend with those who received undue accommodations at banks, and came to the land offices loaded with bank notes which they had borrowed upon condition of carrying them far away, and turning them loose where many would be lost, and never get back to the bank that issued them. All these and many other good effects would thus be produced, and no hardship or evil of any kind could accrue; for the settler and cultivator who wishes to buy land for use, or for a settlement for his children, or to increase his farm, would have no difficulty in getting hard money to make his purchase. He has no undue accommodations from banks. He has no paper but what is good; such as he can readily convert into specie. To him the exaction of specie payments from all purchasers would be a rule of equality, which would enable him to purchase what he needs without competition with fictitious and borrowed capital.

Mr. B. considered that the return to hard money for the payment of the public lands was the only thing that could give permanency, uniformity, and equality, to what is called land office money. It was of the greatest moment to the people of the new States that they should know what was, and what was not, receivable for public lands, and that what was once fixed should remain stable. They were subject to too many losses and impositions from instability in the receivability of different kinds of paper. They never knew any thing about changes until they are made. When a citizen with much trouble has collected what is land office money to day, he may find to-morrow that it is changed, or, at the moment of carrying it to the land office, he may find it rejected, and himself thrown upon the tender mercies of a shaver to procure, at a new sacrifice, what the receiver can accept. Since the adoption of the amendment, which he had the honor to offer, restricting the use of paper in payments from the Government, it followed, as a necessary consequence, that there must be correspond. ing restrictions upon the receipt of it. That amendment made four important improvements in the federal use of paper money: 1. In prohibiting, forthwith, the use of notes of less than $10 in all payments from the federal Government or the Post Office. 2. In prohibiting the use of notes of less than $20 in such payments from the 3d of March next. 3. In prohibiting the use, in like payments, of all notes whatever, which were issued at one place and made payable at another. 4. In prohibiting the use of all notes, in such payments, which were not equivalent to specie at the place where offered in payment, and convertible into gold or silver on the spot at the will of the holder, and without loss or delay to him. Under these enactments Mr. B. considered the federal Government and the Post Office as virtually confined to specie payments; they will have then to confine

themselves to specie receipts. Whether Congress made a further enactment or not, the Treasury and the Postmaster General would have to impose restrictions upon the receipt of paper corresponding with the restrictions upon the payments in it. He (Mr. B.) was certain that the payments upon the western frontier must be made in specie. There was not a bank note in the United States which could be offered in the West. There was not one which would come under the restrictions which the enactment imposed. The effect of the enactment was to prevent bank notes from being offered in payment except at the place where the bank was situated which had issued it. Such was the effect of the enactment, and such was its intention; for it was intended to lay the foundation for completely breaking up paper money as a national currency; for completely cutting off paper from the federal Government; for completely returning to the currency of the constitution for the federal Government; in a word, for re-establishing the gold currency! which never could be done if the federal Government continued to receive and pay out paper money.

Mr. B. considered the proposition which he had made as another step towards the consummation of the great object of securing to the people a specie currency. It would effectually accomplish that purpose for the new States, and the extension of the same provision to the custom-houses and post offices would secure a specie currency to the old States. Whether his proposition became law or not, it must take effect. The Secretary of the Treasury would have to do by regulation what he proposed that Congress should do by law. The obligation to pay out in hard money involves the necessity to receive in hard money; and he was only anxious about his proposition, as he preferred stability to change, legislation to regulation, and the will of Congress to the will of the deposite banks or of a Secretary of the Treasury.

Mr. WEBSTER said that he and those who acted with him would be justified in taking no active course in regard to this resolution, in sitting still, suppressing their surprise and astonishment if they could, and letting these schemes and projects take the form of such laws as their projectors might propose.

We are powerless now, and can do nothing. All these measures affecting the currency of the country and the security of the public treasure we have resisted since 1832. We have done so unsuccessfully. We struggled for the recharter of the Bank of the United States in 1832. The utility of such an institution had been proved by forty years' experience. We struggled | against the removal of the deposites. That act, as we thought, was a direct usurpation of power. We strove against the experiment, and all in vain. Our opinions were disregarded, our warnings neglected, and we are now in no degree responsible for the mischiefs which are but too likely to ensue.

Who (said Mr. W.) will look with the perception of an intelligent, and the candor of an honest man, upon the present condition of our finances and currency, and say that this want of credit and confidence which is so general, and which, it is possible, may, ere long, overspread the land with bankruptcies and distress, has not flowed directly from those measures, the adoption of which we so strenuously resisted, and the folly of which men of all parties, however reluctantly, will soon be brought to acknowledge? The truth of this assertion was palpable and resistless.

What, sir, are the precise evils under which the finances of the Government, and, he believed, of the country, now suffer? They are obviously two: the superabundance of the treasury and its insecurity. We have more money than we need; and that money, not being

[APRIL 23, 1836.

in custody under any law, and being in hands over which we have no control, is threatened with danger. Now, sir, is it not manifest that these evils flow directly from measures of Government which some of us have zealous. ly resisted? May not each be traced to its distinct source? There would have been no surplus in the treasury but for the veto of the land bill, so called, of 1833. This is certain. And as to the security of the public money, it would have been at this moment entirely safe, but for the veto of the act continuing the bank charter. Both these measures had received the sanction of Congress by clear and large majorities. They were both negatived; the reign of experiments, schemes, and projects, commenced, and here we are. Every thing that is now amiss in our financial concerns is the direct consequence of extraordinary exertions of executive authority. This assertion does not rest on general reasoning. Facts prove it. One veto has deprived the Government of a safe custody for the public moneys, and another veto has caused their present augmentation. What, sir, are the evils which are distracting our financial operations? They are obviously two. The public money was not safe; it was protected by no law. The treasury was overflowing. There was more money than we needed. The currency was unsound. Credit had been diminished and confidence destroyed. And what did these two evils, the insecurity of the public money and its abundance, result from? They referred directly back to the two celebrated experiments; the veto of the bank bill, followed by the removal of the deposites, and the rejection of the land bill. No man doubted that the public money would have remained safe in the bank of the United States if the executive veto of 1832 had not disturbed it.

It was that veto also which, by discontinuing the national bank, removed the great and salutary check to the immoderate issue of paper money, and encouraged the creation of so many State banks. This was another of the products of that veto. This is as plain as that. The rejection of the land bill of 1833, by depriving the country of a proper, necessary, and equal distribution of the surplus fund, had produced this redundancy in the treasury. If the wisdom of Congress had been trusted, the country would not have been plunged into its present difficulties. They devised the only means by which the peace and prosperity of the people could have been secured. They passed the bank charter; it was negatived. They passed the land bill, and it met the same fate. This extraordinary exercise of power, in these two instances, has produced an exactly corresponding mischief in each case, upon the subjects to which it was applied. Its application to the bill providing for the recharter of the Bank of the United States has been followed by the present insecurity of the public treasure, and a superabundance of money not wanted has been the consequence of its application to the land

bill.

The country (continued Mr. W.) is the victim of schemes, projects, and reckless experiments. We are wiser, or we think ourselves so, than those who have gone before us. Experience cannot teach us. We cannot let well enough alone. The experience of forty years was insufficient to settle the question whether a national bank was useful or not; and forty years' practice of the Government could not decide whether it was constitutional or not. And it is worthy of all consideration that undue power has been claimed by the Executive. One thing is certain, and that is, there has been a constant and corresponding endeavor to diminish the constitutional power of Congress. The bank charter was negatived, because Congress had no power under the constitution to grant it; and yet, though Congress had no authority to create a national bank, the Execu